Hi Maeve,
Welcome to your personalized Grit Lab Report!
We will go week by week, reviewing everything you have told us through Poll Everywhere.
We hope this will help you reflect on what you have learned and experienced during Grit Lab.
Important note!
Sometimes, you may not have been able to respond to all polls.
If the data for one of the polls is missing, the automatic report will display NA, or ““.
Okay, let’s get started!
The first half of Grit Lab delves deep intp the passion facet of Grit.
We like to call it Choose Easy, because we think gritty people pursue what they enjoy.
Putting it graphically, gritty people tend to pursue the intersection of these four circles.
The first time we met, you told us where you were on the grit rubric.
Regarding passion you picked Stage 4: I have an interest I’m actively pursuing, voluntarily devoting more than 3 hours of “free time” each week .
Regarding perseverance you picked .
As you know, grit grows, so don’t worry if you are not yet where you’d like to be in your grit journey.
Hopefully, this class will help you become grittier each day.
In week 2, we looked at your interests.
Interest is an emotion, and it is the opposite of boredom.
Your interests are the activities or subjects that spontaneously grab your attention.
Trying things out and seeing how you feel is the best way to refine your interests.
In week 3, we studied values, your beliefs about what is important.
You said your top three values were universalism, benevolence, and self-direction.
You wrote a “This I Believe” essay, and here’s where you located it on Schwartz’s value taxonomy.
When we talked about strengths in week 4, you said your personality strength was conscientiousness.
You said your top three talents were verbal, social, and kinesthetic.
We then talked about goal hierarchies.
You said you had a general intuition (but nothing specific yet) about your top-level goal.
We discussed self-concordance, or how much a goal aligns to your deeply held values and beliefs.
A goal you said you will be pursuing for the next six months is to getting a job .
Here is how self-concordant that goal was:
Don’t worry if your self-concordance for that particular goal is low.
It might mean that you need to reframe that goal in a way that makes it more relevant to your deep self, or change it!
Remember that self-concordance is goal specific, so other goals might be more self-concordant.
We then transitioned to the second part of Grit Lab:
Work Smart
In week 6, we looked at goal setting and planning.
You WOOPed!
For your Wish, what you wanted to accomplish, you said Have time to read my fun book .
For your Outcome, what would happen if your wish came true, you said I’ll be excited .
For you Obstacle, what it is within you that stands in your way, you said I procrastinated homework .
For your Plan, you created this when-then plan to achieve your goal: when I finish a class this week, I will add the assignments to specific times in my apple calendar .
Whether you changed your WOOP or stuck to that one, here’s where it landed between being a total fail, and going exactly according to plan.
And here’s how much you learned
These goals are hard, and despite our best efforts, our plans can fail.
The important thing is that you learn something along the way!
In week 7, we talked about deliberate practice.
You shared you’ve done daily practice in running .
We learned that deliberate practice requires a challenging, hyperspecific goal, maximum concentration, instant feedback, and is often done alone.
In week 8, we discussed feedback.
Even though feedback can be hard to take, it is often the key to improve. So if you want to improve, seek it actively!
You said you felt embarassed when receiving critical feedback, and embarassed when receiving positive feedback.
We then turned to learning about stress.
In week 9, you reported feeling a lot of stress in your life right now, the primary source of it being soccer regionals .
We also talked about adversity and failure.
Although related, adversity and failure are different:
Adversity happens to us, whereas failure is something for which we are generally more responsible.
However, how we interpret stress and failure matters…
Interestingly, research has found that people who believe that stress can facilitate learning and growth experience enhanced performance, well-being, and health.
And failure—not achieving a particular goal—can be interpreted as “I’m learning!” and lead you to look for the lesson in that experience.
We closed the Work Smart section of the class by talking about habits.
Throughout the semester, you practice habit building using your Build-A-Habit Guide book.
You describe the habit you chose as Health .
Whether you were successful in habit building or not, this is how much you learned.
Finally, what good is grit if we do not dream for others?
So, we transitioned to Paying it Forward.
In week 10, we looked at mentors: role models that take an active role in your growth.
Hopefully, your mentor was authoritative, being both supportive and demanding.
Here’s how you described them:
You also wrote a gratitude letter to Other .
In one word, you said it made you feel proud .
One way of paying it forward is having a prosocial, beyond-the-self purpose. Here’s how you responded to items assessing that.
… and so quickly we arrived at the end of the semester.
Here’s how your mood varied over these weeks.
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Do you notice any patterns? Is there anything that correlates with your mood?
Here you can scroll through all the quotes you wrote to summarize each class.
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| Keri Walsh-Jennings quote about how it is her duty to milk her skill and ability for all its worth (not the right adjectives but the same idea) |
| Asking the people closest to me what they think I should do (as a career) |
| The idea that extrinsic can motivate goals to become intrinsic |
| My apple calendar is actually a great cue! |
| Now that we know it, we need to NOTICE when we are deliberately practicing a task so that we can start to examine how to improve |
| This is the second class this week I've been taught to respond to others using "What I'm hearing is ____ do I have that right?" |
| allostasis is achieving stability through variability |
| Set your situation up for success! |
| the power of relationships on all aspects of life (and thoughout life) |
| it comes down to empathy, empathy builds success as a team |
In the final class, we looked back to everything we’ve learned together and to how our passion and perseverance evolved during this class.
Here are the comments from your Grit Lab Teammates:
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| Jai Smith |
| I truly admire Maeve's commitment to her family-oriented values, and I'm delighted to see how she seamlessly integrated them into her Discovery Project. Throughout the course, Maeve consistently approached class activities with an interpersonal drive, reflecting her inherent desire to contribute positively to others. A quality that undoubtedly aligns with her profession as a nurse. Maeve's always had the ability to include humor in our team discussions, bringing smiles to our faces. Her infectious laughter created a lively and enjoyable atmosphere. Personally, I am grateful for Maeve's assistance in guiding me towards a topic for my Discovery Project. When I shared my role as the manager of the women's basketball team, she immediately suggested exploring it as a potential project theme. Although I eventually chose a different path, Maeve's support left a lasting impact on me.
In reflecting on Maeve’s Discovery Project, I appreciated her sharing about her serendipitous moment. A touch of luck that added a layer of grit to her journey. I found Maeve's triumph in navigating the highs and lows of hosting events particularly interesting. Her newfound appreciation for the intricacies of hosting, including uncontrollable factors like indoor versus outdoor weather, resonates deeply with the essence of grit. Despite the challenges, Maeve's meticulous planning culminated in a successful hosting night, a testament to her resilience and unwavering commitment to excellence. I am confident that Maeve will continue to make a positive and lasting impact on the world with her personable and welcoming personality.
|
| Jackson Lopiano |
| Maeve is an incredibly supportive and insightful person. Based on our group discussions, I can tell that she is a very thoughtful listener and it is clear that she genuinely cares about other people. During the first part of the semester in Grit Lab, I remember sitting next to her on the first day and she did not hesitate to start conversation. Her perspective both from her experience in the Nursing School and as a senior at Penn were very insightful and I enjoyed hearing about them. I’ve been able to tell that she has genuine interest in what she does and I admire her passion. There is no doubt in my mind that Maeve will continue to touch the lives of those around her and make a positive impact on her community.
I really enjoyed listening to Maeve’s Discovery Project. She was able to clearly and thoughtfully articulate what she has been working on the past couple of months, which made it easy to listen to. I like that she was able to bring family traditions that she enjoyed from home and bring it to her home here at Penn. I appreciated how Maeve recognized that she has a lot more respect for her mom hosting events now that she recognizes that amount of work that goes into hosting. I would say that this is also the biggest lesson I took away from Maeve’s presentation because you really do not know how much work something is/how much work someone puts into something until you try it yourself. |
| Ambika Gaur |
| Coming into this class knowing that we would be with the same assigned groups all semester, I was skeptical and nervous to see how those dynamics would be. This apprehension only made my new friendship with Maeve even more special. Maeve has been an absolute pleasure to get to know throughout this semester. Her presence acted as a glue for our group. She brought laughter, authenticity, enthusiasm, and warmth to every class. When there were times that we as group were lower in energy and everyone was slow to start talking during our weekly group discussions, Maeve would step up and her energy would get the ball rolling and bring everyone else’s energy levels up. I also really valued Maeve’s candor during group discussions: her general updates really allowed us as a group to glean a glimpse into her character and life, in a way that felt neither forced nor rushed. Hearing her speak about the people in her life that were important to her, it was clear how fiercely Maeve cares and loves. I have had so much fun with Maeve this semester, and I am so fortunate to have made a new friend.
From her Discovery Project presentation, I really appreciated how Maeve immediately started out with a bright energy — it was contagious and made us excited about her project from the get go. I loved the story she told about serendipity during her project: when she saw the book she had been researching and looking for at the house of the people she babysits for. I appreciated these personal touches, and how she tied her desire to work on hosting back to her inspiration from her mom. I learned about the art of hosting from her sharing all the small things she had to consider and troubleshoot from hosting her own holiday dinner party at her place (like pre-turning the AC down before guests come because it is bound to get hot). |
We hope you have emerged from Grit Lab a little grittier than you started.
Do you want to see how your grit rubric changed?
Drumroll please…
Don’t worry if the rubric doesn’t yet reflect growth. It is only a coarse measure that cannot replace your own self-reflection.
In any case, grit is not built in a day…
…remember that progress is never smooth…
…so stay passionate and persevering in the lifelong quest of choosing easy, working smart, and paying it forward.
With grit and gratitude,
Angela and the Grit Lab team.